The witch craft phase germinated in Europe during the high middle ages due to the Church focusing on the persecution of heresy in order to maintain unity of doctrine, leaving practitioners of paganism to be persecuted by authorities, thus creating the mentality of magic being heresy against Christianity among the Christians from 1480-1700, as witches were persecuted in most of Europe with recorded numbers exceeding 100,000, most of which were tortured until they gave in and admitted to the perpetuated lie, but this wasn’t the case in England, as they didn’t utilize torture. Individuals were accused to be witches because of peoples’ attempt at rationalizing what they didn’t understand or feared as witchcraft, believing that the ‘practitioners …show more content…
A poverty-stricken widow, who’s boss had tried to help her out in her time of need, was accused of being a witch because of claims of cannibalism and killing children, but when you analyze what had happened, one can come to the conclusion that the children had caught the plague, as it took a few days for them to die, and Europe was facing random outburst of the plague over several centuries, but the townsfolk had to find something to blame for the deaths of those children and they chose to kill another (Doc 1). The people accusing the innocent, the shop owners, and the staff of the court of often had ulterior motives, usually in the form of wealth and greed, as they had burned and tortured a great number of people, as noticed by the Canon Linden in Trier, Germany (Doc 2). No one was left unscathed by the accusation of being a witch, even Alice Prabury, who attempted to help both animals and people, who were sickened, but yet she was accused of witchcraft and spreading the plague (Doc 4), though this isn’t surprising as those who belonged to the lower class, as defined by their husband’s occupation, were much more likely to be accused of witchcraft, especially for the wives of laborers and farmers, though this is to be expected, as those viewed as little class were among the presence of those who affected drastically by the socioeconomic changes of Europe, especially the plague, rebellions, and income inequality and changes (Doc